LOCALadk Magazine

Fall 2015 LOCALadk Magazine 53 LOCALadk #CONSERVATIONRESULTS EXPLORE Sil v e r L a k e B o g , M o s s L a ke , Sa n t an o n i P re s e r v e … a n d m a n y m o r e ! S p r i n g P o nd B o g, V a lc our I sl and, D u nha m B a y M a r s h , Ev er t o n Fa l l s , O K S l ip F al l s , I n d i a n R iv e r , E ss ex C h ai n L a kes, L a ke L i l a , B l u e L e d g e , H u d s o n R iv e r, L yo n M o u n ta i n , Co o n M ou n t ai n , 518.576.2082 adirondacks@tnc.org Adirondack Chapter, Keene Valley, NY nature.org/adirondacks The Fourth Adirondack Rural Skills & Homesteading Festival returns to the Paul Smith's VIC on October 3rd. The event is sponsored by the Adirondack Center for Working Landscapes, a partnership between Paul Smith's College and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County. The festival celebrates traditional skills, aimed at both pre- serving regional culture and promoting sustainability. Drawing on the programs of Paul Smith's College, and Cornell Co- operative Extension, visitors can participate in workshops related to home food production and preservation including basic butcher- ing, canning, beer and cider making, bee keeping, gardening, raising livestock and cheese making. The Paul Smith's culinary students and chefs will also be serving a variety of culinary creations, using ingredi- ents from a 50-mile radius. In addition to a focus on local food, there will also be a variety of for- estry demonstrations including low impact logging using draft hors- es, an introductory chainsaw safety course, portable sawmill demon- stration, and a cordwood construction class. This year's festival is in conjunction with the ADK Fungi Fest which will feature a variety of workshops including wild and edible mushroom, "myco" brews, using fungi for dies, and a selection of mushroom dish- es prepared by Paul Smith's College culinary students. Brett McLeod is an Associate Professor of Natural Resources at Paul Smith's College, the founder of the Adirondack Rural Skills & Home- steading Festival, and author of The Woodland Homestead (Storey Publishing). The Woodland Homestead demonstrates creative ways that the woods can be used to build and support a sustainable home in the woods. Instead of viewing the forest as a swath of trees that pre- vents agrarian pursuits, McLeod paints the forest as an ecosystem of opportunity that can be managed to provide building materials, food, firewood, and even livestock. McLeod's own woodland homestead was carved out of an abandoned 50 year-old Christmas tree farm that was so dense the forest floor couldn't support plant life. Today his woodland homestead is a more diverse landscape that supports livestock, a managed woodlot (which he refers to as his personal Home Depot), woodland gardens, a cabin and barns built from wood on the property.

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